AAA assigns each approved hotel and restaurant a descriptive rating of One to Five Diamonds. The definitions vary for hotels and restaurants, ranging from basic to moderate to luxurious in terms of service, décor, and amenities.
THE SANCTUARY AT KIAWAH ISLAND: COMBINING SOUTHERN CHARM WITH MODERN AMENITIES
With taste and 19th-century elegance, The Sanctuary at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort on South Carolina’s coast has quietly and graciously combined the charm of the old South with amenities that the rich and famous require in vacation mansions.
The 255-room, $125 million, seaside destination resort hotel earned AAA’s most prestigious Five Diamond rating in 2006 for its luxury and impeccable excellence in providing sophisticated service and first-class comfort.
“This is a refuge from the stress of modern life, a special place where everything comes together,” said Vijay Singh, hotel general manager. “We have a beach among the top ten in the United States, 90 holes of championship golf, the nearby charming city of Charleston and a place where the environment is preserved.”
Probably the last major resort hotel that will be built on the South Carolina shoreline, The Sanctuary incorporates the classical and historical flavor of nearby historic Charleston using the highest quality finishes of stone, stucco, wood, cooper, slate, ironwork and brick.
The grand lobby overlooks a meticulously manicured green lawn leading to the Atlantic Ocean gently lapping a pristine, sandy beach.
Twenty-foot-high domed lobby ceilings rise above stuffed chairs and couches strategically located to invite small gatherings for conversation, relaxing, reading, or playing chess or bridge.
In keeping with its theme of Southern hospitality, the lobby’s three sections resemble a Southern gentleman’s home—a morning room with a gas fireplace and antiques; a central living room with a grand piano played nightly, and a bar with paned bay windows outfitted with dark wood shutters and green leather chairs.
A pair of majestic curved wooden staircases that evoke memories of the movie “Gone With The Wind” and Scarlett O’Hara’s flirtatious descent to greet Rhett Butler bracket the lobby hallway.
The left staircase leads to the fine dining AAA Four Diamond-rated Ocean Room restaurant, the other to the award-winning spa, with a menu that includes 75 different peels, waxing and hair services, pedicures, manicures and spa treatments in 12 treatment rooms with hardwood floors, shuttered windows and therapeutic color schemes.
At 520 square feet each, standard rooms include five-fixture bathrooms draped with fluffy 5-foot-long cotton towels, large marble walk-in showers with two showerheads and a bench, dual marble vanity sinks and deep soaking tubs beneath white wood shutters that open between the bathroom and the
bedroom—all under 9-foot high ceilings.
Artworks, antiques, galleries, boutique shops and nature tours compete for attention with five world-class golf courses, two tennis centers with 23 Har-Tru courts and five hard courts, three swimming pools, 10 miles of uninterrupted, unspoiled white sandy beach compact enough for bicycles and 30 miles of woodland bike paths. – Tom Crosby
PINEHURST: CAROLINA HOTEL EMBODIES LEGENDARY SPIRIT
Tall spruce trees majestically line the Village of Pinehurst’s Carolina Vista, framing the approach to the Carolina Hotel, one of the oldest and most historic hotels in the south.
Passing between a pair of four-foot high white brick columns, a circular entrance road surrounds a lush green lawn with waist-high hedges reading “Pinehurst 1895.”
It was 1895 that the first hotel (the Holly Inn) was built and became the genesis for the Village of Pinehurst. Six years later the Carolina Hotel opened, built by Pinehurst founder James Walker Tufts to handle the Holly Inn’s overflow, and constructed in an H-shape in the Colonial Revival Style with a signature octagonal cupola over the center pavilion. It is one of the few all-wooden hotels still in existence on the East Coast.
Today, this sleepy, genteel Southern town boasts antique stores, restaurants, boutiques and candy shops with business fueled by the steady stream of guests at the trio of hotels that comprise the Pinehurst Resort—Carolina Hotel, Holly Inn and Manor House.
The resort queen is the cream white, four-story, plantation-style Carolina Hotel, with 230 rooms and rated by AAA as a classic, historic, large-scale Four Diamond hotel. The resort king is golf, with more courses (eight) than any other North American resort and host—both past and future—to PGA Golf championships.
Decorating the halls of the hotel and the clubhouse (which is used for three of the eight courses, including legendary No.2), are photographs, placards and championship winner lists. Even those who aren’t golf fans can’t help but recognize those who have teed it up here—Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Payne Stewart, Sergio Garcia, Greg Norman and Tiger Woods.
An extensive landscaping design by Frederick Law Olmsted exhibits lavishly and beautifully styled gardens of hollies, azaleas, gardenias, camellias and year-round blooms.
Most rooms were renovated in 2008 with flat-screen televisions, premium bedding, larger desks, new floor and wall coverings, and floor-to-ceiling marble bathrooms with pedestal sinks.
The Carolina Dining Room has imported Italian Murano crystal chandeliers and a famous three-lane morning buffet. The Ryder Club lounge off the lobby has a sweeping veranda with a not-to-be-missed Carolina bagpiper performing at dusk each evening from spring to fall. – Tom Crosby |
